Little Sis and I grew up loving Rolf Harris. We could never ‘see what it was yet’ but loved watching him paint in that bizarre abstract way with what looked like pots of housepaint. His programmes also introduced us to the didgereedoo and the wobble board and his famous signature records ‘Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport’, ‘Jake the Peg’, ‘The Court of King Caractacus’ and, of course, ‘Two Little Boys’. The latter was our favourite and we often acted out the story it told of the two little boys on their wooden horses pretending heroics in childhood which would later be acted out on a real battlefield.
The song itself was written about the American Civil War but ‘My Family at War’ last night told the story of Rolf’s father, Crom, and his bosom buddy and brother, Carl. They had emigrated from Wales to Australia but both signed up to join the ANZAC forces and returned to Europe to fight the Bosch. Carl was only 16 and this was discovered when they reached England so he was kept behind whilst his brother went off to the trenches of Northern France alone. They were separated for the first time.
One of the tales recounted in the programme was the battle for the village of Villers Bretonneux, which was recaptured from German hands by the ANZAC divisions with heavy losses in April 1918. Above the blackboards at the village school are written the words ‘N’oublions jamais l’Australie’, a sentiment echoed throughout the town. Never Forget Australia.
It was not until August 1918 that the brothers found themselves on the same battlefield at Le Hammel and both were injured. Crom received a gunshot wound and was taken off to a field station from where he returned home. Carl was not so lucky. The shrapnel wound in his knee caused complications and he died shortly afterwards aged only 19. Crom never spoke of his time in the trenches but he kept his helmet, complete with a large hole in the back, signifying how close he came to death earlier in the War. When Rolf became famous and began singing ‘Two Little Boys’, his Auntie Pixie would always turn it off because she couldn’t bear to be reminded of the death of her brother.
The other story told in this episode was that of Kirsty Wark’s Uncle John Alan Wark. This remarkable young man signed up a few weeks after Lord Kitchener’s initial call and wrote the most beautiful letters home to his family. His War spanned the entire 1914-18 duration and in November 1918, he wrote to his mother telling her that he was on his way home. A few days later, travelling through Belgium, he started to feel unwell and was taken to hospital where his death was one of the 50 million in the pandemic of Spanish Flu that swept through Europe in 1918.
If you get an opportunity to watch any of the episodes in this moving series on BBC iPlayer, you will discover stories of amazing courage that bring the horror of that terrible time graphically to life.
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